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July 13, 2012 - Rush Limbaugh Program
36:39
July 13, 2012, Friday, Hour #2
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Yesterday, the Obama administration issued a new directive stating that the traditional work requirements of the new welfare reform law back in 1996, the new work requirements can be waived or overridden by a legal device called a waiver authority under the Social Security law.
Welfare reform has been gutted, ladies and gentlemen.
Live from the Southern Command in sunny South Florida, it's open line Friday.
Hatchway!
While everybody's worried about who the vice presidential nominee is going to be and whether or not the nominee is pro-life, pro-choice, pro-Martian, everybody worried about whether Mitt Romney left Bain Capitol in 1999 or 1998 or 2001, Barack Obama continues his systematic dismantling of the private sector economy of the United States of America.
After this move, if anybody thinks that the attack on the way this country was founded is simply accidental, you can't.
Great to have you here.
Telephone number 800-282-2882, the email address, lrushbo at EIBnet.com.
This is from the Heritage Foundation, Robert Rector, who has been at Heritage probably longer than Obama's been alive.
Bob Rector, he's done some of the best work on poverty in this country as compared to poverty around the world.
If you have taken my, if you've become a Heritage member, you need to search and absorb some of the work of Bob Rector, R-E-C-T-O-R.
Kiki Bradley also helped put together this report, Obama Guts Welfare Reform, from yesterday.
The Obama Department of Health and Human Services released an official policy directive rewriting the welfare reform law of 1996.
The welfare reform law of 1996 was put together in Congress where all laws are put together.
Bill Clinton vetoed it two or three times.
Finally, he signed it as part of his need to get re-elected in 1996.
And when he signed it finally, a bunch of Democrats led by the Reverend Jackson demanded that he change it after the election.
But he didn't.
It was left intact.
It has been working.
It requires work or an attempt to work in order to qualify for welfare payments.
The new policy, however, guts the federal work requirements that were the foundation of welfare reform law.
The Obama directive bludgeons the letter and intent of the actual legislation.
Welfare reform replaced the old AFTC, aid to families with dependent children.
That was the program where a mother got paid for every child she had, whether the husband was around or not.
99 times out of 100, the husband wasn't around.
The federal government became the husband and the provider.
And it became profitable to have babies.
And it was a program out of control.
Welfare reform fixed it.
And AFDC became welfare reform.
The actual name of the welfare reform law is Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, T-A-N-F.
TANF is the acronym.
Welfare Reform, officially known as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
underlying concept of welfare reform was that able-bodied adults should be required to work or prepare for work as a condition of receiving welfare aid.
The welfare reform law is often characterized as simply giving state governments more flexibility in operating welfare programs, and that's a misunderstanding.
While new law did grant states more flexibility in some respects, the core of the act was the creation of rigorous, new federal work standards that state governments were required to implement.
The welfare reform law was very successful.
In the four decades prior to welfare reform, the welfare caseload never experienced a significant decline.
But in the four years after welfare reform, starting in 1996, the caseload dropped by nearly half.
It worked.
Half of people on welfare, AFTC, which then became TANF, dropped out of the program.
Employment surged.
You had to find work to stay on welfare.
You had to try to find work to stay on welfare.
You had to work, and it worked.
Employment surged.
Child poverty, rector's special area of expertise, child poverty among affected groups plummeted.
And the driving force behind these improvements was the rigorous new federal work requirements contained in welfare reform.
Half of the welfare caseload dropped in four years.
It worked.
Obama can't abide that.
We don't want people off of welfare in this regime.
We don't want people leaving the welfare roles.
Those are voters that are getting away.
We want more people in the welfare roles.
We're going to advertise food stamp.
We're going to have food stamp parties.
And I'm going to do all this while asking everybody to worry about what Mitt Romney's doing with his money.
So how did Obama do this?
You say, what was the trick?
The regime yesterday issued a new directive stating that the traditional welfare reform work requirements can be waived or overwritten by a legal device called the Section 1115 waiver authority under the Social Security law.
Section 1115 says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services may waive compliance with any of the requirements of specified parts of the law.
However, this is not an open-ended authority.
Any provision of law that can be waived under Section 1115 must be listed in Section 1115.
The work provisions of welfare reform are contained in Section 407.
On purpose, critically, this section, as well as most other welfare reform requirements, are deliberately not listed in Section 1115 so that they would not be waivable.
I hope this is not too hard to follow.
We start throwing numbers out.
People get confused.
Basically, the people that wrote the law suspected that future administrations might try to play tricks and waive the work requirements.
So they said the only thing that can be waived is in this section.
Well, they did not put the work requirement in that section.
So the law says that the work requirements cannot be waived, yet Obama did it yesterday.
That's right.
In establishing welfare reform, Congress deliberately exempted or shielded nearly all of the welfare reform law from that Section 1115 waiver authority.
They didn't want the law to be rewritten at the whim of health and human services bureaucrats.
They knew that there'd be people come along the road later down the line that would want to do it.
Of the roughly 35 sections of the welfare reform law, only one is listed as waivable at Section 402.
And Section 402 describes state plans, reports that state governments must file, HHS describing actions that gets into a bunch of bureaucraties.
The welfare reform law became a blank slate.
This new Obama dictate asserts that because the work requirements are mentioned as an item that state governments have to report, all the work requirements can be waived.
It's not the law, that's just their lawless interpretation of it.
And their lawless interpretation removes the core of welfare reform.
Welfare reform thus becomes a blank piece of paper, blank slate, that health and human services bureaucrats and liberal state bureaucrats can rewrite at their own will, like Obamacare is.
In a December 2001 document, Welfare Reform Waivers and TANF, the nonpartisan CBO, well, Congressional Research Service actually, clarified that the limited authority to waive state reporting requirements, Section 402, does not grant authority to override work and other major requirements.
Now, in the past, state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities, and I'm not making this up, in order to get around the law.
This is what liberals have done, in order to get around the welfare reform law, which requires work, liberal straight state bureaucrats have attempted to define activities such as hula dancing, attending weight watchers, and bed rest as work.
Now, these dodges were blocked by the federal work standards.
Now, the Obama administration has abolished those standards.
Work can now mean anything but work.
And so, what happened yesterday?
The new welfare dictate issued by the regime clearly guts the law.
The administration tramples on the actual legislation passed by Congress and seeks to impose its own policy choices, a pattern that has become all too common in this administration, and the result is the end of welfare reform.
It's over.
Have you seen it reported anywhere?
Have you seen the media even celebrating it?
Have you seen any Democrat go on television and talk about, hey, guess what?
We have reformed welfare reform and we've taken the work requirement.
Have you seen any story on this?
You haven't.
It's not part of the narrative.
The narrative is what's Romney doing with his money.
The narrative is when did Romney leave Maine?
The narrative is Romney a felon.
The narrative is Condoleezza Rice, who's pro-choice, going to be Romney's VP.
All the while those diversions are going on, the Barack Obama administration is gutting at every opportunity they have the basic foundations and fiber of this country, while they're out there spreading this class warfare and class envy business that you're poor because he's not,
He's only rich because he's taken what you had.
And we're going to punish him by raising his taxes.
And so you'll feel better.
All this class warfare stuff.
While all that's going on, Barack Obama gutted welfare reform and basically said, all you have to do is sit on your ass.
And we'll now call that work and you qualify for welfare.
That happened yesterday.
And we will be back.
Don't go away.
I thought Barack Obama liked work.
I thought Barack Obama was out there talking about trying to create jobs, folks.
I thought Barack Obama's number one priority was finding a way to keep jobs in this country from being outsourced.
And he was going out.
He was the expert.
Barack Obama.
He's the one that knows how to create jobs in this country.
Here he is gutting welfare reform.
I thought, by the way, that Barack Obama, prior to the Supreme Court decision on health care, was out there intimidating the justices, telling them they had no business overturning a law passed by the duly elected representatives of the people.
Do I remember that right?
I have that right.
Obama was threatening, along with Patrick Leahy, threatening John Roberts, threatening the justice.
You do not overturn laws passed by the duly elected representatives of the people.
And Obama himself just went in there and writes an executive order and guts welfare reform, Mr. Job Creation.
Mr. Jobs missed it.
No, he didn't call it anything.
There wasn't any announcement.
They just did it.
Now, Romney has responded to Obama's gutting of welfare reform.
Romney said, quote, President Obama now wants to strip the established work requirements from welfare.
A success of bipartisan welfare reform passed under President Clinton has rested on the obligation to work.
The president's action is completely misdirected.
Work is a dignified endeavor.
The linkage of work and welfare is essential to prevent welfare from becoming a way of life.
Well, that's kind of whispering in a crowd, but he still said something about it.
But he ought to turn it into an ad.
Turn this into an ad and let everybody know what happened.
Welfare reform.
Half of the welfare refoll, well, half of the welfare roles, put it another way, the welfare roles were reduced by 50% in four years, with the passage of welfare reform.
Half the people on welfare found work in the first four years.
And yesterday, Obama guts it.
Mr. Jobs.
Mr. Work.
Mr. Worried About Outsourcing.
Mr. American Dream talking about how working hard and getting someplace in life is what his administration's all about.
All Obama wanted to do was double government dependency, which he's done.
Carson City, Nevada, Kate, glad you called your next on Open Line Friday.
Hello.
Hey, Rush, how are you doing?
Good, thank you.
Good.
I'm the one that's from Fairfield that has been talking to you for 20 plus years.
Oh, you're back.
Okay, I have you.
You should have said Kate from Fairfield.
I would have known.
Well, you know, I did that last time, but then I admitted to you that we'd moved to Carson City.
The reason I'm calling is I understand how you feel about this kind of leader-right situation.
You know, you know me.
I'm a conservative, pro-Is, Catholic Muhammad, the grandmother of six.
I will vote for Romney no matter who the VP pick is.
That being said, I think we need to have a conversation about this.
I think we can't just accept whatever he does.
I think we need to talk about it.
I think we need to say, hey, there's a lot of good pro-life VEEP candidates out there.
There's Marco Rubio, there's Rob Portman, there's Tim Plenty, there's Susanna Martinez, there's Nikki Hilly.
There's a lot of good folks out there.
I think we need to talk to them.
Accept whatever Romney does.
I mean, we're supporting him, and I'm a financier to him to talk about it.
Can you agree with that?
Well, are you under the impression that I don't care?
See, I don't think it's going to be kind of loserized.
I think all of this is whatever it is.
I don't think she's even put a statement out there.
She doesn't want it.
She doesn't.
I don't know who you can believe when they say what anymore when it comes to this kind of stuff because you have to deny these things.
You can't act like you want it.
Right.
The VEEP right now, you know where it rates on my scale of one to 10?
Zero.
Minus two.
Okay.
I was close.
I know you well.
I was close.
You're right.
You're right.
We're hanging by a thread rush, and we all know that.
And what you just said about the whole welfare reform thing, and thank you very much.
That's exactly what I was thinking, for pointing out the hypocrisy between what he said about the Affordable Health Care Act and what he's doing with the welfare reform.
It's worse than hypocrisy.
It's hypocrisy at the very least.
I'm having trouble coming up with the proper term, but all I can ask is if you really think this is just accidental, this destruction is taking place in our country and in our economy.
It is hypocritical.
Critical, the guy goes out, threatens Supreme Court.
You don't dare overturn laws passed by the elected representatives of people, but he does it himself.
Amen.
Yeah, because he can do what he wants.
Well, we're dealing with a statist, an authoritarian, somebody that really doesn't believe in democracy.
He just took something that was the result of the democratic process and just zeroed it out, using what he thinks is the power he has as president of the United States.
And I think it's, you know, for people who are still on the fence, for the independents who are trying to figure out which way to go in this, I think this kind of information is worthwhile for them to know, which is why I dig it out and trumpet it.
But look, I understand your concern about the VEEP, pro-life, and all this and so forth.
And I haven't put that on the back burner by any stretch of the imagination.
I got to go, though.
Kate, always great to hear from you.
Thank you much.
Open Line Friday continues when we get back here on the EIB network.
Open Line Friday, Rush Limbaugh, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.
This unbelievable CNN is reporting that President Obama's proposal to raise taxes on the highest earning Americans could take a 1% bite out of economic growth.
Obama's tax increase on the rich could slow economic growth by one percentage point.
Now, you may not think that's a big deal, but with economic growth barely at 1%, Obama's tax increase could bring economic growth to a standstill, zero growth.
How does that help the middle class?
How does that help the poor?
When the economy isn't growing, how has anybody helped?
Raising taxes on the rich slows down the economy by 1%.
And there are people who think it's a good idea.
Because it's all about getting even with people.
It's all about being fair, getting even with.
Making sure some people suffer as long as everybody else is.
The Daily Caller is reported.
I didn't see this because I, as you know, I don't watch MSNBC and I've imposed a ban on MSNBC soundbites.
And aside from today, my life has been much better as a result of that.
The political term kitchen cabinet.
Do you know the origins of this term?
You know the origins of the kitchen cabinet?
It got started in the early 1800s, and it was used to describe the informal advisors around President Andrew Jackson.
Now, according to a guest on MSNBC, he's on Lawrence O'Donnell's show on Wednesday, the term kitchen cabinet is now racist.
Mark Thompson, who hosts some serious radio program, told Lawrence O'Donnell that Mitt Romney should not have used the term kitchen cabinet at the NAA LCP convention.
He says, it might have been a small thing, but it's important for people to understand you can't be culturally ignorant.
He singled out one African American who came with the 20 in his entourage as an African American that was in his kitchen cabinet in Massachusetts.
And he promised that he would remain in his kitchen cabinet if he was in the White House.
According to this guy, mentioning African Americans and kitchens in the same sentence is a bad idea.
This guy said to talk about being in the kitchen and not talk about African American actually being in your real cabinet.
That's not a good metaphor to use with African Americans.
You say you got a black guy in your kitchen cabinet, but he's not in your real cabinet, then he's a step and fetch it, and it's racist.
I kid you not, that was advanced as a theory on PMS NBC on Wednesday night.
And Romney made a tactical error.
He doesn't understand black culture.
You have a kitchen cabinet, you got one guy in your kitchen cabinet, but he's not in your real cabinet.
You go to the NAALCP, you say, this guy's been in my kitchen cabinet, and he's going to stay in my kitchen cabinet.
He's nothing more than a slave.
I don't know that the guy is black.
His name's Mark Thompson.
I've never heard of him.
I don't know if he's black or not.
I didn't see it.
Anyway, after this guy said this, then Lawrence O'Donnell parroted a line from Al Sharpton who said that Romney wanted to be booed at the NAA LCP, but O'Donnell said Romney wanted to be booed to appeal to certain racist precincts.
So he was building off the comet of Pelosi.
And all of this is happening during the presidency of the first black president.
How many people voted for Obama thinking that it would end racism, that would end all these arguments, that finally we'd be done with this?
And all it's done, and I predicted it, and I don't mind doing a nyan yin yin ya.
See, I told you so, I warned you it was going to get even worse because I said any disagreement whatsoever with Obama, no matter how outrageous the idea, is going to be chalked up to racism.
And it's getting absurd now.
I mean, we just remember this Coker Bay, whatever her name was that from the convention.
I kept this aside.
I actually kept it as I knew I was going to have to use it.
What is her name?
Charlotte Stoker Manning, chairwoman of women in the NAACP, said about Romney, you can't come here and talk about jobs for black people at the level he's coming from.
He's talking about entrepreneurship, savings accounts.
Black people can barely find a way to get back and forth from work.
They don't know savings accounts and entrepreneurship.
Doesn't Romney know that?
And now we got this guy on MSNBC last night.
It's racist to say that you got a black guy in your kitchen cabinet.
I don't think this guy has the slightest idea what a kitchen cabinet is.
Sounds like he actually thinks it's a bunch of household staff.
We're surrounded by lunatics, people that should be insane asylums, and just genuinely stupid people.
We are surrounded by them, and we're being governed by them.
Who's next?
Don in Chicago.
Don, glad you held on.
You're on Open Line Friday next.
Hello, sir.
Hey, Rush.
Last night I was sitting down with my wife till almost 1:30 in the morning, and I'm self-employed.
I'm a painting contractor, and we were doing payroll, and we were doing the quarterly taxes.
And I'm looking at the numbers, and it's just not.
I've been in business 20 years, and I think I've got to just close shop and call it a day and go get a job because I'm borrowing money.
I'm not paying myself.
I'm paying my guys.
My guys aren't working full weeks anymore.
It's been going downhill for the last three, four years.
Isn't that sitting down and doing the quarterly?
Isn't that a pain?
Isn't that depressing?
I hate it.
I got to tell you, I know, man.
I know exactly where you're coming from.
I despise it.
If most people had to pay their taxes that way, it'd be the biggest tax reform we ever had.
Absolutely.
I repeat.
I've been listening to you for 20 years.
I'm inspired by you.
It's what keeps me going.
I'm sitting here in my family room.
I'm looking at a picture of my son who's a sergeant in the Marine Corps.
And I know if I was talking to him right now, he would say, Dad, don't do it.
Don't quit.
Don't do it.
But reality being what it is, Rush, I don't see anything getting better.
Wait a second.
Who's quitting?
If you shut down your business because it's not viable and you go get a job someplace, you try to, you're not quitting anything.
You're changing your strategy.
I understand, but I feel like I'm failing.
And I just, you know, and I feel like I'm being beat.
And it's.
Don, I'll tell you what, you're in Chicago.
If I were you, I'd be thanking the Lord every day I'm still alive.
I'm outside of Chicago.
You got to learn to look at the positives here.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Your mayor's looking out for you.
Yeah.
Well, he is my mayor.
I live out in the suburbs, but I understand.
I understand.
It's just, you know, I feel like I've been beat up.
And I'm trying to keep in, I'm trying to stay in the ring, and I just keep on getting knocked out.
You said you're a painting contractor.
That's correct.
You own your business.
Yes, sir.
What kind of painting, residential, construction, business work, anything you can get?
Well, that lately, but we kind of specialize in retirement communities, so it's kind of residential commercial work.
And with the economy being the way it is, these people aren't moving into retirement communities because they can't sell their property.
Right, because they can't afford to retire.
I got a story right here.
It's in Forbes.
Why you should plan on working to aid 70.
It's because if you don't, you're either going to get wiped out by a death panel or you're going to starve because there isn't going to be a retirement for you.
I understand.
I understand.
So the seasoned citizens are not moving into retirement homes at a rapid enough rate for you to go in there and paint the walls.
That's correct.
And these are high-end communities.
One of them is up in Lake Forest, and these people have million-dollar homes that are now worth $500,000 and $600,000 properties that they can't sell because they're not going to let them go, and they can't afford to move in and have a double mortgage payment.
So they're just sitting.
Well, go on welfare.
They just reformed that.
You don't have to even work anymore.
Go on welfare.
Never rush.
I'm not going to be a burden on anyone.
I'm not going to file bankruptcy.
I'm just going to close shop and slowly pay down the money I owe and I'll just take a job.
I mean, that's the right thing to do, but it's just not, I just don't want to do it.
I don't want to do it.
How many employees do you have?
Well, I've had as many as 15, but now we're down to like three guys.
I'm not even counting myself.
And lately, we haven't been putting in 40-hour weeks because the work is so sporadic.
But you still have to pay them.
Absolutely.
I'm taking their checks right now, and I'm not getting one.
Now, the employees always eat first.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Then after a while, none of them appreciate it anyway.
Well, my wife had to take a job four years ago just to kind of pick up the slack so we could drop the health care that I was paying for.
So now she's picking up the health care.
Our kids are grown up and married.
So that's not a burden on us.
Well, health care is free now.
That is Supreme Court took care of that.
You got it better off out there than you actually know.
I'm glad I clawed, Russia.
You're really making me feel great.
I'm sorry.
Look, I am so ticked off today, I can't describe it.
I don't mean to be shoveling it all on you.
Look, I really understand your frustration.
I feel it for you.
What's happening to you and people like you has me so burned under the collar what's happening to this country.
It just frosts me.
I can't tell you how mad it makes me.
It frustrates me that I can't do anything about it.
I know what to do about this.
And so many other people know what to do.
We're hamstrung.
We are prisoners to a bunch of people who are happy that you are in the circumstance that you're in.
That's what ticks me off.
This is the greatest country on earth.
I get emails from people in your circumstance, phone calls from people like you, and it's so damn unnecessary.
It's happening because there are people that want it to happen.
I can't tell you how it ticks me off.
It ticks me off that more people don't realize it for what it is.
For years, I've heard you say, and one of the favorite things I've ever heard you say was, there could be a recession, there could be a depression, but I'm not participating.
And that's the attitude I've always taken, that somehow I'm going to work through this.
I can make things happen.
And if I could just get a lead, I can make things happen.
I'm a salesman.
I can do it.
But lately, I've just been feeling like I'm fighting the world.
Well, you are.
The deck is stacked against you as it's never been stacked against you.
You have your government working against you now.
You have institutions working against you.
You have people who are drawing up plans for this to happen as it's happening.
That's what you're up against.
That's what makes this different.
And I have.
I've often said, can have a recession, fine.
I'm not participating.
And it's still possible to do that, but we've not been in a circumstance like this.
We have not been in an economic downturn caused by the White House and prolonged by the White House with policy after policy after policy that is oriented toward creating the circumstance that you're in.
Yeah.
So you've got all kinds of double whammies.
Then you, on the other hand, you're an entrepreneur.
You're a business.
Most people think you're rolling in dough.
You own your own business.
No, that's the way it is.
I'm trying to make ends meet like everyone else.
Have you thought about painting housing projects?
Have you thought of maybe figure out where all these people Obama's taking care of are and go paint where they are?
I guess I got to start thinking outside the box a little more.
Well, you do.
For real.
Yeah.
You do.
You're up against odds that you've not been up, and you're up against things that you never thought you'd be up against.
No, this is a whole different.
I've been in business for 20 years.
I've been in the trade for 32, and I've never seen anything that even was close to this.
Never.
And no end in sight.
No, and that's why, you know, when you're sitting downstairs in the basement in your office and you're looking at your wife and she's looking at you like, this is bad.
We need to change strategy.
We got to look at this as a reality.
And I think you got to go get a job.
I couldn't even sleep last night, Rush.
Couldn't even sleep.
Well, I really feel for you.
It frustrates me.
I wish there were things that we all could do.
See, there are.
That's what's, there are things to do.
There were things that could fix this, or at least get started on a pathway to having this fixed right now.
They could be done.
And we're sitting here debating when the hell Romney left Bain.
It just frosts me.
Our last caller was Don is outside Chicago.
Don, seriously, something you might look into.
All these foreclosed homes have to be kept up.
The banks have to keep them up.
And there are foreclosed homes.
I guarantee you, there's a bunch of them in the Chicagoland area.
As part of your investigation, Don, but maybe packing up and becoming an employee, before you do that, call on some lending institutions and find out if there's any work to be done in maintaining foreclosed properties because there's a hell of a lot of them out there.
Let me tell you something.
What bothers me about this is that every day in the media, what do we get?
We have a horse race crap.
We get poll after poll after poll.
How's Obama doing here?
How's Obama doing there?
The country is crumbling.
It is literally falling apart at the foundations around everybody, except in Washington.
There is no recession in Washington.
That's where all the money is.
Everybody there is doing just fine.
They have no clue what's happening outside the Beltway.
And I'm not just speaking euphemistically.
They really don't know.
They should.
It's their job.
So they live in this world where they can pursue all these issues in an academic and anecdotal way as though there's no reality attached to it.
8.2 unemployment means something.
14.4% unemployment black community means something.
Economic growth of zero means something.
It has impact on real people.
And all these people in the media, they're liberals.
They supposedly have all this care and compassion and concern for their fellow man.
There is genuine, there are lives being changed for the worse and forever out there because of the policies of this guy.
And none of that matters to them.
All that matters is how they can massage the news every day so that this guy doesn't look bad and maybe get re-elected.
To do what?
More of this?
What is happening to this country that these people support?
What is happening to this country that these people want more of?
Well, there are answers to those questions, and they ought to scare you to death.
There are people who want more of this.
And if they don't want more of this, there are people who will guarantee more of this by virtue of keeping in power those running the show now.
Meanwhile, real people are seeing their businesses close up, their life's work count for nothing, their savings go away to zilch, kids up to debt in $200,000 just to go to stupid schools.
There's real life happening out here that's being destroyed, and these people are so unaware of it.
No concern whatsoever.
Open Line Friday brief time out here.
Another obscene profit break here, but we coming right back.
We'll be back before you know it, folks.
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